He moved to Thailand with minimal savings. Now he plans incredible vacations for the rich and famous

Daniel Fraser is the co-founder of luxury experiential travel company Smiling Albino. (Courtesy Smiling Albino via CNN Newsource)

Bangkok — It’s a Wednesday afternoon in downtown Bangkok, and Daniel Fraser is excited.

The Canadian has just returned to the Thai capital from a surveying trip in neighboring Laos and his mind is buzzing.

While there, he stumbled upon a factory filled with old Soviet military equipment, transport trucks and munitions cases — a reminder of this land-locked nation’s significance during the Vietnam War and broader Cold War.

But Fraser’s not hunting for film or TV shoot locations for a blockbuster Hollywood war epic. He thinks this old factory, with its steampunk vibe, will be the perfect setting for a lunch his travel company, Smiling Albino, is planning for an ultra-high net worth client’s upcoming trip to the region.

Fraser understands why some might be confused. Why is he taking a very wealthy traveller to have a meal at a dilapidated industrial site as part of his vacation? After all, Southeast Asia has a long list of luxury resorts and private villas on offer, many of which have fantastic restaurants — Laos included.

But when dealing with ultra-high net worth clients, Fraser says you need to go far beyond making sure the sheets have the appropriate thread count.

“Our mission is to bring the most discerning, most elite travellers in the world to Southeast Asia, and ensure that they experience something that they can’t experience somewhere else or with someone else here,” he says.

Achieving this means creativity is key. Fraser notes the world’s richest have the funds to organize their own special experiences with international DJs and celebs, or to shut down entire theme parks. But that’s not the type of journey he’s interested in assisting with.

“These guys could do that anywhere, right? And they do do it anywhere,” he says.

Hence why he’s so excited about this dusty old factory in a remote corner of Laos. It’s part of a bigger puzzle Fraser and his team need to put together — and one of the easier pieces.

They also need to arrange a visit to an incredible cave with a seven-kilometre-long river flowing through it, called Kong Lo, and the client can’t be spending hours bumping along dusty dirt roads to get there.

“Our plan is to bring a helicopter to one side of it and paddle through with a group of villagers with headlamps, perform a spirit ceremony in the cave honouring the village and the cave spirits, and then exit a couple of hours later on the other side and have the helicopter pick us up and then take us to a beautiful little guest house that we’re going to prepare for a lovely local lunch,” he says.

Executing these types of adventures require months of planning — for example, securing the necessary permissions from various government ministries isn’t done overnight.

“We’re doing what I call James Bond-level experiences that have biblical logistics behind them,” says Fraser.

“We need all these different things so it becomes a Hollywood production just for one day of a five-day trip. We always tell our team, ‘We’re not building a tour, we’re creating an incredibly immersive theatrical production that does honour to the local community.’”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Fraser has a connection to season three of HBO Max series “The White Lotus,” which was set in Thailand. During the early stages of development, he says he was invited to take the show’s creator and director, Mike White, out for an exploratory adventure in Bangkok.

Aside from the famous director, who was in town on business, Fraser won’t go on the record and name-drop, for privacy reasons. He will share that his company has planned adventures for tech billionaires, Hollywood superstars, Grammy-winning musicians and top athletes, many of them household names.

‘We decided that night we’re going to quit our jobs’

Fraser’s very first trip to Thailand was in 1995. His Texas liberal arts college helped him secure a placement teaching English and speech at Bangkok’s Chitralada Palace School, which he describes as “the most unusual year you would ever imagine as a 21-year-old.”

Rather than spend his free time island-hopping and partying with the young backpackers who were flocking to the country, he was hanging out with locals — many of them very well connected — and seeing a side of Thailand few tourists experience.

He admits it wasn’t your usual introduction to the country, but it left a lasting impression; he knew he wanted to get back to Thailand at some point.

Fast forward four years, college is over and Fraser is back in Canada, working a marketing job in Calgary. It’s September and winter is definitely coming.

He and a close friend, Scott Coates, have some tough choices to make.

“We had been egging each other on to just step off the plank and do something bold and start a business,” Fraser recalls.

“We went out for a beer one night and said, ‘You know what, we’re young-ish, single, debt-free … if we don’t step off the corporate chain now, not there’s anything wrong with that, we never will.”

The plan was simple. By the time they saw the bottom of their glasses peering back up at them, they would have to decide.

“Our beers were almost done … So Scott ordered some Jagermeister.”

Fraser says it only took one shot of the German digestif — not widely known for its contributions to positive decision-making — to make their minds up for them.

“We decided that night that we’re going to quit our jobs, and a few weeks later, we ended up in Thailand.”

The plan was rooted in Fraser’s experiences while teaching abroad — rather than follow the usual tourist trail, they would target those looking for “a travel company that fast-tracked people into the life and times of a country.”

But things were very different in the late 1990s. There were no blogs with detailed steps on how to set up a business in Thailand. No translation apps. No Google Maps to help you navigate Bangkok’s labyrinth of streets and alleys.

To make things even more challenging, and perhaps even a bit comical, the duo had no experience.

“It’s funny because, we didn’t know anything about the travel industry,” he says.

“We arrived with backpacks and a couple of thousand dollars thinking we’re going to start this super company.”

Once the excitement of the move faded, reality crept in.

“We left Calgary with all this fanfare,” Fraser laughs, recalling they “had a big farewell party at the airport, and then arrived here, asking, ‘What are we actually doing? No idea.’”

Nonetheless Smiling Albino — a reference to “the sacred legacy that albino elephants have here in Southeast Asia” — was born.

‘Can you put us in, you know, a proper hotel?’

Today, he says the company has a team of around 40 full-time employees, as well as a network of freelance staff, spread throughout Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam all working to create tailored, private journeys in the region.

Fraser says he and his friend knew from the start that they didn’t want to focus on the budget travel market — but they certainly didn’t expect to be working with the rich and famous.

“The mission from day one was to create experiential travel,” he says.

“We were seeking people who were upwardly mobile travellers, the semi-luxury market who adored the spontaneous feeling of backpacker-style exploration but with brilliant logistics and elevated experiences. Not staged traditional luxury.”

The pair set out offering bike tours around the old canals in Bangkok’s eastern Minburi district, routes that even today are far off the radar of most tourists. Then they expanded north, starting with another less travelled region of Thailand — Chiang Rai — taking travellers on scooter tours through the mountainous terrain, visiting local villages along the way.

“We always had a licensed Thai guide with us at all times,” says Fraser. “We learned a lot of great things from those guides who joined us in those early days, and many of them formed wonderful partnerships that we maintain to this day.”

It took about a year — there was no marketing budget — but through local friends, tour guides and word of mouth, Fraser says people figured out “these two crazy Canadian guys run fun trips in Northern Thailand.”

Eventually, they started noticing that the people expressing an interest in joining their trips were becoming more and more affluent.

“They would say, ‘We like the sound of your trip, but we don’t do guest houses…. Can you put us in, you know, a proper hotel, even a four-star hotel?” Fraser recalls.

Initially, he says they were reluctant — and their stubbornness may have stalled their growth.

“It was almost like, ‘No, we’re purists’… we believed that we had to go so far against the grain and that probably held us back in those early days.”

In the years to follow, Smiling Albino started modifying their journeys a little in response to guest feedback, while sticking to the same routes. Somewhere along the way, they realized they “have some really, some serious movers and shakers coming on these trips.”

“Change this, change that, and now we’re staying in the Four Seasons and our guests are arriving by private jet,” he says.

“We’ve taken some of the world’s most famous people and had them experience true Bangkok after dark — streetside noodles, $1 beers, seeing a little alleyway in Chinatown, going into illuminated temples at night that are kind of off the grid. It’s really the same thing we set up to do 25 years ago; the clients have changed, the spirit of the trips hasn’t.”

Fraser says he and his business partner arranged an amicable split in 2013 and remain close friends. Today, many people mistakenly think Smiling Albino only works with ultra-high net worth travellers, but he says they “still do day trips for US$200 a person” and not every trip they plan is an elaborately choreographed spectacle.

As for the secret to being able to plan private, cool experiences for so many budgets, Fraser says there are a few rules Smiling Albino follows.

The journeys they offer can’t be duplicatable — it can’t be something someone dug up online. Also, the experience has to be engaging, unique and local.

With that simple DNA, Fraser says there are infinite possibilities — and that’s what helped the business grow.

“People started asking us, can you do this in Nepal? Can you do this in Cambodia? Can you do this in Vietnam? And so we slowly started building in other countries.”

Hosting a TV show … in Thai?

When Fraser first moved to the country, he says he had to learn Thai for survival as he was living outside of the usual tourist centers, but it also was essential for their business.

“We wanted to prove to ourselves that if we’re gonna walk the walk, we gotta literally talk the talk,” he says.

“And so from day one I really focused on it and got quite excited about it, because I saw it as a great door opener.”

In 2011, after a few TV and emceeing appearances, someone asked if he was interested in doing a documentary-style show, in Thai, focused on cultural travel.

“It was terrifying, because I felt comfortable ordering food in front of my friends in Thai, but being on national television on Thai PBS, speaking about cultural things, I thought, ‘Whoa, I’m crossing a line here.’ It taught me all these things about Thailand I never knew.”

Fraser’s reverence for his adopted home is clear, with the travel expert stressing he did not take on the gig thinking he was going to be teaching anyone anything about their own culture.

“I’m unqualified for that. And I think that’s naive. I think that’s what made the show have a lot of appeal locally. People would see it on TV and say, ‘That’s a really innocent, fun interpretation of all things Thai.’”

He says the show opened many doors for him, allowing him to explore unique temples, festivals and villages while meeting famous Thai artists, monks and politicians.

Impressing the locals

Looking back on the years since he came to Thailand, Fraser says it wasn’t a billionaire tech CEO or a Grammy-winning artist that presented his biggest challenge to date.

That moment came during COVID, when “we were forced to reinvent ourselves and keep the business alive, keep the dream alive.”

He had one job: impress the locals.

“We took a group of affluent Thais who, during COVID, couldn’t travel abroad, and they said, ‘Show us our own country. We hear that you’re creative.’ And that was incredibly intimidating,” he recalls.

“So we took them to northern Thailand, places a little off the grid where there’s no luxury, really, and created meaningful local experiences, including a surprise train party where we attached a couple of luxury train cars (to the regularly scheduled train) that we retrofitted and decorated in a 1920s Gatsby theme.

“There were seven stations, and we had different performers getting on and off at each one. So logistically it was space-age in its precision, with the idea that we need to blow these people’s minds so that they experience their own country in a way they never, ever could before.”

Tired of the crowds? You don’t need to be a billionaire

In the post-COVID era, with overtourism a constant source of frustration in the world’s leading destinations, Fraser’s efforts to offer exciting alternatives are certainly timely.

But, he stresses you don’t need to have unlimited funds to design a unique getaway.

For instance, Fraser estimates more than 80% of all tourists coming into Thailand visit just six locations — Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Koh Samui, Pattaya and Hua Hin. That leaves a lot of the country left to enjoy.

“What we’re trying to do is to get people just an inch off the map, so that they explore the other parts of Southeast Asia in the best way they can, in a way that nobody else has,” he says.

“It’s the same for a backpacker or a billionaire. They want authentic experiences.”

By Karla Cripps, CNN